Customer Reviews

Tall Man

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"Tall Man," by Chloe Hooper, is a rare bird, indeed, a non-fiction work of passion and power. It is set in Palm Island; an aboriginal settlement in the "Deep North" of Australia, and concerns the death in police custody of the 36-year old Aboriginal Cameron Doomadgee, who was arrested by a white police officer, Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley, for swearing in his direction; was taken to the police lockup, and was dead 40 minutes later. Doomadgee, who was drunk at the time, had apparently been beaten to death. Hurley, a charismatic and popular cop who had chosen to spend most of his career in the aboriginal precincts that his coworkers wouldn't voluntarily go near, was always the chief suspect. But Hurley was fiercely protected by his own; apparently the thin blue line is universal. He was never convicted of the Aboriginal's death.

Author Hooper is the author of a highly praised 2002 novel, ("A Child's Book of True Crime") that was named a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize. Excerpts from her award-winning investigation of the Doomadgee case have appeared in "The Observer," and "The Guardian Weekly." She lives in Melbourne, Australia, and was asked to write about the Doomadgee case by the pro bono lawyer who represented his family; she spent three years on it, researching the brutal history of Australia's whites, and its native population. Generations of white policymakers did their best to break up Aboriginal families, deprive them of work, and isolate them. The results can be seen only too clearly in Palm Island, colonized by children taken from their families and thrown into dormitories. Hopelessness, anger, violence, drunkenness, drug use, and sadism seem to characterize the community; not very pretty, and she brings it all to the table. This book brings to mind a grim New Zealand movie of some years back, Once Were Warriors, in its depiction of that island's aboriginal community (known as Maori), and its seething rage, drunkenness and violence.

"Tall Man" is an outstanding piece of work, but is surely depressing reading. In addition,it's not easy keeping all those aboriginal family names straight; I wished for a chart that helped identify them. Furthermore, most Americans don't know much about Australia; the few pictures given in the book that might help us, are printed on the same paper stock as the text, and are therefore of very poor quality. Then you've got to wander to the last page of the Acknowledgments in back to find their captions. Moreover, while I'm discussing pictures, the author frequently describes the Aborigines' "dream paintings" to us, several times to do with "the tall man." But these dream pictures have been gathered for exhibits in museums and art galleries all over the world, and their catalogs are surely available. And a cousin of mine, Osa Brown, put together a collection of these pictures in book form for a New York museum. So, pictures of these dream paintings can be found, and I believe they should have been included in the book, to allow readers to see what the writer was describing to us. I know I seem to be asking for more/better pictures a lot recently, but this is one book that really cries out for a photo gallery.

Chloe Hooper combines gripping narrative with harrowing reportage to convey an act of violence in a land of stunning brutality. When an Aboriginal man dies in custody on an island off Australia's Queensland coast, the event becomes national news after a pathologist renders a flippant report and the white police want to write off the event, so the locals riot. It has been a long time since a book has moved me as deeply as this book does.

On Friday, November 19, 2004, Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, at the end of his second year in the Aboriginal settlement at Palm Island, arrested Cameron Doomadgee for cursing at him and another officer. Doomadgee was drunk at ten in the morning. Forty minutes later, Doomadgee was dead, with injuries consistent with a massive car crash. Hooper tries to reconstruct those forty minutes, and the legal wrangling that lasts for nearly three years afterward.

In Hooper's heartrending language, Palm Island mixes the worst aspects of an Indian reservation, a penal colony, and Hell. Though Hooper conducts her reportage with the help of Doomadgee's family, her frankness creates a world of moral compromise, stunning melding of honorable and shameful traits, and a people wracked with generations of pain and abjection. There is enough in this book to stun and appall anybody of any social or political point of view.

Sergeant Hurley comes across one moment as a sterling lawman who builds bridges between white government and poor black Aborigines, then as an evasive, angry bigot. Cameron Doomadgee is a loving father and leader, and at the same time a chronic drunk with a brutal temper. The trial to see who was responsible for what drags out an entire province's buried racism as well as its higher ideals. Australian frontier justice is swift, sure, and unforgiving.

The story unfolds in a way comprehensible to world audiences. Comparisons to the Wild West and the American Civil War make the story of a crime on the far side of the planet feel as close as my own history. But this very clarity is also what makes this book such an impactful read. I can imagine having a beer with Chris Hurley, or a friendly dust-up with Cameron Doomadgee; and I can imagine having to choose sides when one dies in the other's custody.

Hooper unflinchingly depicts the story's participants as they are, with the glory and pain intact. In reading this, I was struck by one question: how different is this from America? Looking at suffering urban blacks or reservation Indians, and the way people who look like me deny that anguish while crushing those who dare rise up, I have to confess, maybe not much. But does that make the present culpable for the crimes of the past? I can't say.

This is a very important book. People of good conscience and confident values should read it, regardless of their politics or background. It is packed with harrowing truths and hard-eyed views of the highs and lows of human nature, a story that is as moving as it is terrifying, as uplifting as it is appalling. I couldn't put it down. I don't ordinarily advocate in reviews, but I will make an exception here: drop everything else and read this book, right away.

Chloe Hooper brings the news from Australia, and the news is not good: some people there, it seems, are as eager to believe any sort of ill deed and call it justice so long as it doesn't upset their idea of the social order. And other people are just as willing to tilt, Quixote-like, at the windmills of justice, and walk away all the more noble for their futility.

I'm loathe to give too much away, because this is a nonfiction book that reads as briskly as a police procedural, and with the urgency of scripture. But suffice it to say that the reader will come to know the workings of Aboriginal Australia, of the police who serve and harm there, of the history that continually undercuts the people who live there. The reader will be reminded, more than once, of things North American: the Trail of Tears, the destruction of the Arawaks on Hispaniola, the tyranny of state-as-parent.

In the end, the reader (this reader, anyway), will come to believe that the comparisons of Hooper's work to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song are well-made. This is crime reporting that reads like literature, and I'm excited to know that there are more books by Chloe Hooper yet to read.

Chloe Hooper is a journalist from Melbourne, Australia who traveled to Palm Island, an Aboriginal settlement in Australia's "Deep North", off the eastern coast of Queensland, at the request of attorney Andrew Boe to report on a volatile civil rights case. In November 2004, a drunken Aboriginal man named Cameron Doomadgee was arrested for verbal abuse of a police officer. Forty minutes later, he was dead at the police station, with a black eye, broken ribs, a hole in his portal vein, and a liver cleaved in two. Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley was the arresting officer who had tussled with Doomadgee after the prisoner struck him on the jaw. Another man saw Hurley beat Doomadgee. When the initial investigation concluded that Doomadgee's injuries had been caused by an accident, a riot ensued that burned the police station and Hurley's home to the ground.

A story that was supposed to take Chloe Hooper a couple of weeks to understand took her 3 years, as inquests were repeatedly postponed and she traveled to remote and unpleasant parts of Queensland to try to understand who these two men were: Cameron Doomadgee and Chris Hurley. Hooper is at a disadvantage in grasping her subjects, because Hurley wouldn't speak to her and neither would the men of the Doomadgee family, though she became close to the women. But she does come to understand something of their situation: Abject Aborigines in abandoned settlements whose earlier generations had been displaced adults and stolen children, now overcome by alcoholism, violence, and squalor. The police officers, at once attracted and repulsed by these "wild places", where they become both protectors and oppressors of the populace.

"Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee" explores the questions raised by the circumstances of Cameron Doomadgee's death. Chris Cooper was the first police officer in Australia's history to be held responsible for a death in custody. Even so, the author wonders if the death of one man and trial of another, which everyone with an agenda seized upon, is not a distraction from the dysfunction of former mission communities like Palm Island, where 92% of population is unemployed, children amuse themselves by torturing the wild horses, young men commonly commit suicide, inebriated is the default state of mind, and domestic violence is the norm. The police presence is one aspect of "feeding good intentions into a broken machine and watching them come back in other, twisted forms." It is sometimes benevolent, sometimes an alternative criminality. "Tall Man" is most interesting when it ponders the inevitability and complexity behind that fact.

This is a spectacular short book everyone should read. The reportage of injustice is so astutely recorded; the author fair and poetic and to the point. I loved the recreation of ancient beliefs of the aboriginals - the dream world - juxtaposed to the harsh reality of present day. The writing is sparse yet powerful and moving. I couldn't put it down. AND THE FACT THAT IT IS TRUTH JUST MAKES IT ALL THE MORE MEMORABLE. JMN

Tall Man is about the death of Aboriginal Cameron Doomadgee 40 minutes after being taken into police custody. He was beaten to death. The events surrounding his death and the defense of the suspect of murder, a white police officer are at the center of this book along with an underlying analysis of racism in Australia. In my opinion, this outstanding piece of work does justice to events took place and provides a very impressive narration for a very sad event. I highly recommend it. You will not regret reading it.

This book follows the events of an Aboriginal Australian, Doomadgee, who was incarcerated and died in police custody. The author Chloe Hooper covers Aboriginal history, events leading up to the arrest and the eventual trial. Ms. Hooper interviews both White and Aboriginal Australians to provide an in-depth look at the persecution of a people and the ongoing consequences. Sometimes this book is difficult to read as Ms. Hooper chronicles the plight of the Aboriginals, many who continue living in isolated communities in a cycle of poverty, alcholism and hopelessness.

Even more difficult is the denial and anger of the White community; they are also stuck in a cycle of hopelessness. I found myself seeing this cycle clearly and wishing Australian society would address the issues - knowing full well that we in the US have a similar unresolved issue with our Native Peoples. Guess it is always easier to see others' problems.

I found the book well written and a compelling read. Once I started reading, I didn't want to put the book down. I highly recommend the book.

Wow! Excellent reporting. Excellent writing. Many inter-related topics including Aboriginal and white Australia, racism, the "police mystique," and courtroom strategies. This book is one of the few I've read that is entirely empathetic with the victims (Aborigines) while remaining objective. Please read it!

It's simply not light, summertime reading - not that I insist everything I read fits those categories, but this book is so dense and well-written that I feel it deserves more careful attention than I've been able to give it lately.

Hooper's writing style is simply outstanding. Every detail of life among the Aboriginals is beautifully described, and the personal interactions between various characters are meticulously documented.

As an American who's visited this part of the world, and is interested in Aboriginal culture, I found a lot to recommend in this book. The background on Aboriginal treatment by white settlers is disturbing, to say the least, and there were some details about that, that were new to me. Personally I wasn't bothered by the political stance Hooper took in the book, since I tend to share her sentiments.

This book simply isn't for the casual reader. If you're interested in a fairly detailed accounting of the culture and legal system in this part of the world, get hold of a copy of this book. If you're looking for a more general overview of Australia in general, my recommendation would be Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburned Country." Happy reading!

The "Tall Man" of Cloe Hooper's title refers to both Chris Hurley, the 6-foot-7 senior sergeant in the Queensland police who became the first Australian officer ever charged with the death of an Aboriginal prisoner, and a malevolent spirit connected to "The Dreaming," which is the Aboriginal account of creation.

Hooper, a white journalist, is honest and upfront about her approach to this book. She is partisan, on the side of the Aboriginal community up in arms over the death of Cameron Doomagee, who was left to die in a Palm Island prison cell with a black eye, broken ribs and a ruptured liver after being apprehended by Hurley.

Hooper is thoughtful and well-read. She weaves references to Conrad, Mailer and Orwell into her narrative. She is able to thread a remarkable amount of history and Aboriginal sociology into the story of Doomagee's death and its aftermath. She treats "the Dreaming" as a mystical but real force in the lives of the Aboriginal community and tells the dismal history of their relationship with white society, which is marked in periods such as "Wild Time" and "lost generations."

The book amounts to a lengthy New Yorker-style meditation on the clash between the Aboriginal community and the police union that played out in the three-year legal battle over the question of Hurley's innocence or guilt. It is engaging read, with Hooper's greatest strength being her empathy for and skepticism of both sides. Although it falls short of the great literary journalism that Hooper aspires to --- with clunky passages such as "the ripple of surprise that runs through courtroom dramas ran through this court" -- it is a deep and heartfelt look into a painful yet contemporary aspect of Australian society.